


Maybe Then

by fevered_dreams



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst, Galaxy Garrison, Getting Together, Hurt/Comfort, Lack of Communication, M/M, Soulmates
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-12-31
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2018-09-13 19:04:21
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 18,774
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9137350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fevered_dreams/pseuds/fevered_dreams
Summary: Keith and Lance fall into each other in pieces, and then all at once.Throughout it all, they are sure they love each other.Soulmate AU where, if soulmates are both dreaming at the same time, then there's a chance that the two will dream together.





	1. Chapter 1

The first time that Keith met Lance, or, at least, the first time he remembers him upon waking, was on the cusp of his sixth birthday. At first, he hadn't paid it much attention; he figured that the excitable boy with the bright smile and gangly growing limbs had just been a figment of his imagination born from his loneliness. When Keith had broken away from the dreamscape, opening his eyes to the bleak and tattered walls of his small alcove, he absentmindedly blinked away tears in his eyes that he didn't quite understand before hopping out of bed, a yawn filling his mouth.

Later, though, when he told one of the orphanage volunteers, Elise, about the mysterious boy in his dreams after the small little celebration they had organized for him, Keith though that maybe Lance could be something more.

"You had a dream about someone?" Elise asked excitedly, leaning her face in as she fixed her twinkling eyes onto Keith's. "And you're sure it was someone that you've never met before?"

"Well, I don't think so," Keith muttered, wringing his hands together. He liked Miss Elise, really, but sometimes she made him a bit nervous because she seemed to understand joy in a way that he never could. "The only other people I know are from the orphanage, and I don't really remember anything about anyone from before..."

"And what happened in your dream?"

"Nothing much," Keith responded. He couldn't understand why Miss Elise was so interested in this. To him, this Lance kid just seemed like some kind of imaginary friend that had leaked into his dreams. "We just talked about ourselves. He told me his name was Lance. He was very nice and funny, kinda like you, Miss Elise."

Miss Elise stared down at Keith with a soft smile before reaching over to pat him on his head. "Say, Keith, has anyone ever told you about soulmates?"

"Soulmates? What's that?"

"They say that your soulmate is the one person in the world who is meant for you," she explained.

"'Meant for me?'"

"Yeah, like destiny or fate. Do you know what those words mean?"

"You mean like something that's for sure going to happen?"

"Yeah, just like that," she said, nodding eagerly.

"Ok..." Keith said, even more confused than he had been before. What was Miss Elise talking about? "But what does my dream have anything to do with that?"

"Well, when two people are soulmates and they have a dream at the same time, then they have a chance to meet in their dreams," Miss Elise said as she rose from besides Keith's bed.

"Then... do you think that Lance is my soulmate?"

Miss Elise smoothed Keith's hair down as he tucked his blankets gently underneath his sides. "I don't know, but he could be. Do you want him to be?"

Keith hadn't answered her question, instead choosing to feign sleep. Looking back on it, he doubted that Miss Elise had truly believed that he had successfully went from wide awake to dead asleep within the span of a few seconds, but he was glad that she had let it lay to give him time to consider this new information.

A soulmate? Did Keith want a soulmate? Someone meant just for him; someone that Keith could call his own.

Looking around him, eyes blinded by the darkness, Keith could faintly make out the silhouette of the other boy who shared the room with him. Keith liked him enough, and the two of them were both low-maintenance enough that they rarely got into any big arguments are major trouble, but he knew that their relationship wasn't anything special. His roommate had other friends that meant more to him, and, well, Keith had other acquaintances.

Like this, he was mostly content. Some days, though, in moments of silence when his mind grew blank enough that he couldn't stop the flood of errant thoughts, disconnected and overwhelming, Keith craved something more. He didn't have the words to explain what it was that he wanted, but, laying back with Lance's smiling face flashing behind his drooping eyelids, Keith wondered if maybe someone like Lance was it.

Months passed, and kids went and came in time with the falling of the leaves and encroaching cold, but Keith hadn't dreamt of Lance again. As more and more nights blurred by without Lance, dream or not, he begins to wonder if Miss Elise had gotten it wrong.

He didn't want her to be wrong, though.

He wanted to see Lance again.

"Miss Elise, do you remember my dream about that other boy, Lance?" Keith asked one day, approaching her nervously.

"Yes, of course," she breathed excitedly, kneeling down next to him with a gleeful clap of her hands. "Did you have another dream about him?"

"No," Keith whispered, eyes downcast, "but I want to. But I also don't know if he actually is my soulmate. So, I was wondering if you had any books on soulmates? So I can try to find out."

"Do you miss him?"

"Yes... I do."

Miss Elise nodded as she stood up, giving Keith's head a light pat. "Alright, I understand. I'll try to find you some books about soulmates that I think will help you find some answers without being too hard for you to read. Sound good?"

"Yes, thank you, Miss Elise."

"I can tell you, though," Miss Elise continued, gaze tender and smile glazed with a touch of sadness, "that, even if he is your soulmate, sometimes, no matter how hard you try, it'll be hard for you to find him again. No one knows how the soulmate dreams work, really."

One of the things about Miss Elise that had always left Keith in a strange combination of admiration and uncertainty was her ability to approach everything with happy excitement hope, so, looking at her now, with sorrow furling slowly across her face, Keith didn't know what to do.

"Miss Elise, do you have a soulmate?"

Shock overtook the sorrow momentarily, before it returned with a rueful smile. "Who knows? Dreams are finicky things, and people are even more unpredictable. It's hard to know the true story about anything, sometimes."

"Well, I think it's ok, even if you don't have one," Keith offered, awkwardly reaching for one of her hands, "I think that tons of people would easily fall in love with someone like you, Miss Elise."

Silence. Then, "Oh, Keith, you're right. People don't _need_ a soulmate. I do hope that you have Lance, though. He seems like a nice little boy, which is perfect for a good kid like you. Good kids deserve nice things, after all," she cooed, pinching Keith's cheeks. He didn't particularly like it, but also didn't have the heart to stop her when she was finally smiling genuinely again.

Besides, he felt a little too bad about himself to turn her away; despite his words, flippant things dismissing soulmates, he also truly, wholeheartedly hoped that Lance was his soulmate because he would be too sad if he wasn't. He didn't want to think of it. 

Then, a few days later, Miss Elise flew into the orphanage happily with a bag close to bursting bouncing off of her hip. "Here, Keith, I found some good books that I thought would mostly fit your current reading level. I hope they're helpful."

The books generally were pretty helpful, some more than others. The simpler ones tended to lean on the side of what Keith considered to be 'a lot of words that said a lot of nothing', making them overall useless.

Miss Elise had laughed for an almost concerning amount of time at that.

The other ones, though, with the actual information that Keith really wanted, were just a touch too difficult for him; thankfully, Miss Elise was more than happy to help him get through them.

Most of it covered things that weren't all that helpful to him, including the fact that soulmates, if they agreed on it, were usually able to do something called 'lucid dreaming', which Miss Elise had described as being able to control your dreams. In addition, the books talked a lot about the idea that soulmate dreams were most easily distinguishable from regular dreams from how vivid and detailed they were, both during the dream and in one's memories after waking.

For Keith, however, he doubted that him or Lance had done any lucid dreaming considering the fact that all they had done was talk to each other, which was not something that Keith would choose to do if he had to choice. Furthermore,the dream was so nondescript, just two boys sitting in the middle of a blank white void having a bland conversation, that Keith couldn't tell if it was boring because he wasn't remembering it well enough or because he knew it too well to warp it into anything more interesting.

One point, though, stuck with Keith because it actually meant something.

'After a soulmate dream, it is extremely common for one or both of the people involved to wake up crying. Some say that it's because soulmate dreams, by their nature as powerful bonding mechanisms forged by a direct link between the minds of two people destined for each other, are more emotionally intense than regular ones; others claim that it's simply because they miss each other once the dream ends.'

Vaguely, Keith remembered those strange, unknown tears that he had found clinging to his lashes after he woke up from that dream so long ago. Strangely and suddenly, Keith began crying again.

"Oh, Keith," Miss Elise exclaimed, rushing over to him with a napkin, "it's ok; it's ok if he's not your soulmate. Maybe you'll have another dream with your actual soulmate, or maybe you'll just find someone else down the line to fall in love with. Please don't cry."

He sobbed and hiccuped uncontrollably for a few minutes, ugly heaving things that left his breath too shaky to explain himself, but he enjoyed Miss Elise's comfort nonetheless. Finally, once it passed, he whispered, "I think he might actually be my soulmate."

Keith didn't say more, too tired to keep talking, but Miss Elise seemed to understand anyway because the furrow of her brow lifts as her usual smile graced her face in its wake. "I'm glad, Keith."

Later that night, Keith finally dreamt of Lance again, sitting in an unfamiliar backyard in an unfamiliar place. Despite all of that, Keith was at ease just seeing Lance's face again.

"Keith!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please let me know what you think :)


	2. Chapter 2

Lance awoke with a start to a blaring sound ringing outside his window, punctuated by the name of an unfamiliar boy melting under his tongue as fiercely as the tears rolling down his face.

"Oh Lance, it's just the neighbor's security alarm again," his older sister, Nadia, soothed as she gently wiped away his tears. "It's nothing to cry about. Did it scare you awake?"

Mildly disoriented, Lance simply shook his head before burrowing himself deeper under his covers. However, he was unable to do more than lay there until breakfast, mind racing about that boy named Keith who had so thoroughly invaded his dream.

Even so, Lance was so preoccupied with recounting every word that had been exchanged between them that he ended up being the last one to stumble his way into the kitchen. Inside, his siblings were already eagerly eating while griping about the alarm that had leaked through their home a few hours ago.

"I am so sick of waking up to that alarm," Ema, Lance's less older sister, complained, spearing a piece of sausage. "It's been going off like that for the past few days at the most annoying times, and it doesn't even sound nice."

"Alarms aren't supposed to sound nice," the oldest of them all, Marco, argued as he stole away the last sausage link that Lance could tell Ema had set her sights on. "What would be the point in that? If they were nice to listen to, then no one would do anything to stop it, _stupid_."

Of course, this dissolved into a minor scuffle between them, tinny silverware clinking against each other noisily all the while, before Lance's mom had approached the table and given the two a few words of her own that quieted them down easily enough. "Don't be so whiny, you two, and Marco, don't be mean to your sister." Ema sent Marco a triumphant look that didn't go entirely unnoticed. "Besides, Shiro can't help but accidentally set off the alarm every once in awhile. He probably doesn't understand how the alarm system works yet."

"But it scared Lance so much this morning that he woke up in tears," Nadia lamented, absentmindedly piling more food onto Lance's plate, "so I hope that Shiro figures out to stop setting of his house's alarm soon."

His family all turn around to face him, concerned. Lance is also mildly concerned with the task of correcting Nadia's accidental lie. "I wasn't crying because of the alarm. I was crying because of my dream."

"Did you have a nightmare?" Lance's mom asked, sitting beside him.

"No. It was a nice dream."

"Oh?" she prodded, head tilted to the side in question.

"Yeah. I talked to some boy for a bit, but, when I woke up, I was crying for some reason."

Her head seemed to tilt even farther, and the look in her eye went from concerned to considering. "And this boy wasn't a kid from school or the neighborhood?"

"No. He said his name was Keith, and I don't know anyone named Keith or anyone who looks like him."

More pointed staring, coupled with a stretch of silence denser than the maple syrup Nadia had generously poured over Lance's pancakes. If he were being completely honest with himself, Lance would have to admit that he loved attention from people. At the same time, he hated being left unawares even more than he enjoyed being admired.

Then, in a flurry of noise and movement that reminded Lance of that one time he got too close to the subway tracks and nearly fell in as a train rushed by quick and loudly coupled piercing sound and a cold gust of wind around him that had Lance wailing in fear, they all closed in on him.

Annoyingly, despite the fact that they were in his personal space and most definitely talking _about_ him, they refused to talk _to_ him.

Still, he managed to catch snippets of their conversation, most of which included 'soulmate,' 'dreams,' and, from his mother, a puzzling moment of 'my baby boy is growing up too fast'.

After being ignored for longer than Lance was willing to tolerate, he barged his way into the conversation with all the usual tact of five and a half year old child. "What are you guys talking about?"

They turned back to him. "Lance, have you talked about soulmates in school yet?" his mom asked, eyes bright despite how bittersweet her voice was mere moments ago.

"A little bit." The teachers one day had briefly mentioned something about soulmates, but Lance hadn't gotten much sleep the night before after staying up to watch a movie with Marco that had effectively rendered him too scared to sleep properly, much to his parents' disapproval, so he didn't remember much from it besides something along the lines of 'one true love'.

Lance, quite frankly, thought that it didn't make any sense because he already had so many people that he loved, and, after learning that there were billions and billions of people, human and otherwise, in the universe, he wondered how it was possible to only have _one_  true love out of them all. Besides, his mom always did say that Lance was the kind of person with a lot of love to give, whatever that meant.

Either way, as quickly as soulmates had been introduced, the matter was then forgotten by Lance and the teachers as its usefulness as a segue into their new vocabulary lesson for the week had been stretched to its limit. Lance's favorite word he learned from that week was 'affection'.

Still, Lance was curious about why his mom was bringing it up all of a sudden.

"Did you guys learn about soulmate dreams at all?" she asked, crouching down next to him.

Lance shook is head.

"Well, they say that sometimes, when two people who are soulmates are dreaming at the same time, then they may be able to dream together," his mom said.

Lance took a moment to consider what his mom was saying before speaking. "What makes you think Keith is my soulmate?" he wondered.

"You see," Nadia began, jumping into the conversation, "a lot of the time, when someone wakes up from a dream with their soulmate, they can't help but cry, even when the dream is nice."

"But why would you cry after meeting your soulmate?"

"It's not meeting your soulmate that makes you cry; it's when you wake up and have to leave them that's sad," Nadia corrected.

"I still don't understand what having a soulmate means," Lance whined, pouting. He could faintly hear his mom cooing over him. "Does that mean Keith is my 'one true love'?"

Chuckling, Marco ruffled Lance's hair as he stood up from the table. "You're just going to have to wait until you're older to figure that out, Lance."

Lance pouted even more. That wasn't a satisfying answer at all.

It seemed as though his siblings and mom were ready to let that be the end of that, however, as they all began to move away from him.

As Ema started collected the dirty dishes off the table, he could hear her whisper to Nadia that 'it was so unfair that Lance was already getting a soulmate,' and he wondered if this soulmate thing was really as big a deal as everyone was making it seem. Later that day after his dad came home, Lance tried asking him and the rest of his family more about it; nothing more came out of his questions, though, as they all basically told him to 'wait and see'.

Lance had never been lauded for his patience, though, and his curiosity was running through his mind ravenously, begging for more information to feast on.

'Curiosity killed the cat, you know?" Ema liked to tease once Lance's questions on a subject began to venture into impossible-to-tolerate territory, but Lance wasn't dead yet, so he figured it was fine. Probably.

So, after coming to the conclusion that his family would be no more help on the matter, Lance figured that asking his new neighbor, Shiro, wouldn't hurt. Shiro was older than him, but not by so much that he was intimidating, while also being generally nice and tolerant of Lance. He had suddenly appeared one day, the new child of the couple that had moved in too recently for Lance to have a strong opinion of.

"He's adopted," Lance's mother had explained, handing Lance his lunch for the day, "which means that they decided to raise him as their son even though he hadn't always been theirs. Does that make sense?"

Lance nodded. He thought it was pretty nice of them to do something like that, and, from then on, his impression of that mysterious couple had only improved.

In addition, Lance hoped that maybe those extra handful of years that Shiro had on him would mean that maybe he had already waited and saw enough to be able to tell Lance more about soulmates.

It turned out that Shiro didn't have any more answers to give than anyone else Lance had interrogated.

"I'm sorry, Lance. I wish I could've been more help," Shiro offered apologetically as he watched Lance pluck fat blades of grass to try to whistle with them. Sadly, Lance had never been good at grass whistling.

"Nah, it's ok," Lance responded airily, tossing away another failed blade. "I guess I'll just have to wait and see like everyone keeps telling me. Does that mean that you don't have a soulmate, then, Shiro?"

"I don't know. I haven't had any dreams like that, yet, but who knows? It could happen tonight, or it could never happen," Shiro answered vaguely.

"Do you want to have a soulmate?"

Shiro paused, looking down at Lance with eyes that were much more serious than the gentle eyes Shiro usually looked at him with, so similar to Marco's gaze that it made Lance ache the first time he saw them. Then, Shiro said, "I'm not sure. The idea of a soulmate scares me a bit, to be honest."

"Why's that? Most people I've talked to about it seem to like it," Lance said.

"Well..." Shiro trailed, "I guess the thought of being eternally tied to a stranger like that scares me. It doesn't really make any sense to me."

Flopping back onto the grass with a dull thump, Lance sighed. "I get that; I just feel like there's too many people out there to love for me to have only one of them."

Shiro laughed, laying down next to Lance. "I understand. You're a very lovable kid, Lance."

Lance beamed before shouting in awe as Shiro snapped off a single blade of grass and effortlessly made a pretty, clear sound with it that blended nicely with Lance's ensuing laughter.

Still, as the months passed without another hint of Keith in his dreams, Lance couldn't help but despair. He refused to say anything about it, both because he felt like admitting as much would disappoint his family, knowing that Lance's soulmate was apparently a fluke, and Shiro because, despite his earlier claims, Lance was still holding out on his soulmate with a fervor that bordered on painful.

Somehow, Shiro could tell anyway. One day, as Lance watched Shiro practice kendo in his room with eyes fixed on someone far away, Shiro knelt beside him and softly pat his head.

"It's ok to miss him, Lance," Shiro stated, tousling Lance's hair affectionately, "but I think that you will definitely see him again. He is your soulmate, after all."

In that moment, Shiro felt so much like family that Lance couldn't help but cry, and, just like his family, Shiro guided him through his tears with all the right words.

Later that night, almost as if Shiro had predicted it, Lance finally dreamt of Keith again, and Lance wondered if he had ever felt as elated as he did watching the other boy approach him.

"Keith!"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please let me know what you think :)


	3. Chapter 3

"I missed you!"

The other boy, Lance, rose from where he was idly sitting and picking at blades of grass as he bounced excitedly on the balls of his feet, a delighted grin pointed at Keith all the while. Despite not having seen him for a long and daunting couple of months, Lance looked just as Keith remembered him: wiry, but lively enough that his scrawniness was just a consequence of his youth instead of weakness, skin shining with a healthy glow and eyes that glimmered even brighter than the warm sun that Lance dreamed for them. Lance didn't attempt to approach Keith, seemingly content to watch, though the impatient tingle that moved his hands gave him away.

Around them was a backyard whose grass and trees were much greener than they should've been for the season. Maybe Lance had simply chosen to dream the surrounding that way, or maybe Lance lived somewhere far away enough that the leaves didn't wither and flourish the same way.

Keith wanted to know which was the truth.

"Is this your backyard?" Keith asked, finally moving forward again to approach Lance. "It's fall where I am, so the trees don't look the same as they do here."

"Yep! I thought that it would be nice to talk to you here, and then we ended up here when you joined our dream. The trees now don't totally look like this, but fall is coming slow this year." Happily, Lance moved, too, guiding Keith away, glancing behind every once in a while to make sure that Keith was still behind him.

Vaguely, Keith recalled a story one of the older kids from the orphanage had recounted to him about a man who had missed his beloved so much that he had faced the gods to get her back from the Underworld. Keith admired him for it, however, at the last step to freedom, the man had lost her forever by looking back, even though he had been told not to. Keith wondered if things would've been different for them if they were soulmates, or if the story's sad ending meant that even soulmates weren't forever.

Regardless, Lance continued to look behind him, and Keith didn't disappear into the depths of the Underworld, so he continued to follow because he couldn't imagine not following Lance, wherever they may go.

"I missed you," Lance repeated once he stopped to sit down, silently inviting Keith to join him. "I was starting to think that we'd never see each other again, and I was really sad about it. I'm glad I got to meet you again."

"Me too," Keith whispered, sitting down beside Lance. "I missed you, too."

"I'm glad," Lance said, smile somehow even wider than before.

"Your backyard is nice," Keith said, glancing around. The area around them was vast and bursting with color, greens bright and the pinks and blues of the nearby hydrangea bush beautiful, though Keith thought it was possible that maybe Lance had dreamed it to be larger and greater than it actually was. Either way, the place had a soothing and comforting atmosphere that permeated all the way to the air that filled Keith's lungs. Gazing upwards, Keith could feel faint memories of laughing siblings and the barking of an old dog that was no longer around that was still loved even in death squirming behind his eyes.

He knew that none of the memories were his own, as much as he wished that they could be, but Keith still reveled in it for as long as they lasted. He was glad that Lance had enough joy for the both of them, and he tried not to cry as they left his mind almost as quickly as they had flitted past, but it would probably hurt even more if Keith let them stay.

Perhaps, in another life, Keith would have something similar to offer Lance.

"I'm happy you like it! We should go to your backyard, next time!" Lance suggested.

"I don't have my own backyard," Keith confessed, digging his fingers into the grass. With staggering realness, moist dirt stuck fast beneath his fingernails. It smelled like fresh rain. "I live in an orphanage."

"Oh." For a few moments, Lance remained silent as he looked at Keith wonderingly.

Keith braced himself for some piteous words born out of sympathetic obligation of which Keith had already heard more times than he ever wanted or needed to.

Instead, Lance just smiled again, laying back on the grass with a satisfied sigh. "Well, then we can visit your orphanage, if you want. My house is cool and all, but, at the end of the day, it's just a regular house." Lance paused to run his own fingers through the ground. "Do you like the orphanage?"

Keith paused to consider. Did he like the orphanage? If he had the choice, Keith would most definitely choose a warm home with a loving family over it, like the ones in the books and in Lance's memories, but he didn't have that choice, and that was just the way it was.

Once, one of the orphanage workers told Keith that life was full of hardships, but it was the good things that happened in-between that made it all worthwhile. Looking down at Lance, Keith figured that, if being an orphan was his hardship and Lance his 'good thing', then his life really wasn't all that bad.

"It's not bad," Keith responded, picking the dirt out from under his fingernails. "The people who come by every day to help take care of us are really nice, and they say that my orphanage has government help, whatever that means, which means that we get the nicest beds and books to read and learn from."

"Does that mean you don't go to school?" Lance asked.

"No, not yet, but I will soon. I asked why, and it took awhile, but I finally got an answer after asking enough times." Much to the orphanage employee's annoyance, but that was beside the point. "Apparently, they like to start school for us a little late in case we get adopted so that our adoptive parents can pick out the school they like best," Keith explained.

"Maybe you'll get adopted soon so you can start school," Lance said.

"Maybe."

For a few minutes, the two of them sat in comfortable silence; being with Lance was easy even without words, though conversation between them flowed effortlessly, and Keith was satisfied enough just being with him. Beside Keith, Lance collected an assortment of individual pieces of grass that he brought to his lips for some strange reason.

"What are you doing?" Keith asked once the pile of grass grew noticeably enough.

"I'm trying to whistle using grass," Lance answered. "You're supposed to be able to hold a blade of grass between your fingers up to your mouth, and, if you blow, you're supposed to be able to make a noise like a whistle, but," and, with a crude demonstration, Lance blew and made a strange farting-esque sound that Keith tried hard not to laugh at, "this is all I can do."

Even though the pout on Lance's face was cute, like that of the sleepy puppy or playful kitten that had once been brought to the orphanage for them all to play with, Keith decided to try it out for himself, awkwardly mimicking Lance's movements. Except, instead of the same ridiculous sound that Lance produced, Keith managed to make a sound that was faintly reminiscent of a hybrid between a whistle and toy horn.

"Ah, you did it!" Lance marveled, leaning forward to watch Keith's face, cheeks puffed in preparation to blow across the grass again. "You know, I think it's pretty unfair that you and Shiro are able to grass whistle like that on your first try, when I've been working so hard and haven't been able to get anything near that nice."

"Shiro?" Keith asked, pulling his hands away from his face.

"Yeah! He's my neighbor, and he's actually adopted! He's older than us, but he's really cool and smart, and, on Thursday's, he always brings me yogurt-covered pretzels after school. Oh, and he's very good at grass whistling, along with lots of other stuff."

"He sounds nice," Keith said. For a second, he wondered if he could gather some information about Shiro from Lance's mind, but then a voice from within his own head stopped him with scolding words about how it wouldn't be right for him to peer through Lance's mind like that without permission, soulmate or not.

Funnily enough, the voice sounded just like Miss Elise's, though Keith wasn't particularly surprised.

"Maybe you'll meet him someday," Lance continued.

"I hope so."

Keith could feel the edges of the dream falling away from him, as the edges of the leaves and feel of the grass underneath his grip began to blur together as all of his senses melded together into an indistinct, single sense of feeling in his waking mind that, while containing everything, made little sense. Nonetheless, the image of Lance's face still remained pretty and powerful.

It seemed that Lance could feel it, too, because he abruptly flung his arms around Keith in a frantic embrace. "I'm so happy that I got to see you again, Keith! Let's have another dream together soon, ok? Don't keep me waiting again."

Through the haze of sensations that littered his mind, Keith tried to give some kind of affirming response. He couldn't tell exactly what he said, though, as bark began to melt away from the trees, but, whatever it was, was enough to leave Lance laughing as Lance started to slip away from Keith.

That festive laugh followed Keith as he woke up, eyes looking up at his still-darkened room instead of the bright day that Lance had conjured up in their soulmate dream.

Miss Elise, too, laughed joyously after Keith told her about his second soulmate dream.

"Lance sounds like a cute boy," she noted.

"He was," Keith said, voice fond as he recalled Lance's cheerful gaze and pleased grin. "He asked me if I liked the orphanage, rather than trying to feel bad for me about it. I like that he asked instead of pretending to understand. I like that about him."

"I'm happy for you, Keith," Miss Elise whispered, resting her warm hand atop Keith's head. "I truly am."

Recalling Lance's final laugh bright like a sunbeam, which followed him during moments of quiet like a merciful ghost, Keith was happy for himself, too, possibly more so than he had ever been before.

So, Keith waited once more for his next soulmate dream, now with more thrilled anticipation than anxious dread. He didn't want to be like that poor man from the story, so Keith would be patient, and he wouldn't look back in fear, or else he might lose Lance forever.

Keith wasn't sure what he would do if he did, and he wasn't interested in finding out.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i know it's kinda hard to tell when they're younger than they are in canon, but i hope lance and keith are in character
> 
> either way, please let me know what you think :)


	4. Chapter 4

Over the next few years, Lance never saw Keith as much as he would've liked. The soul dreams came at strange, scattered moments, and, as fervently as Lance wished for more, to see Keith more often and bathe in his presence for longer, even if it's simply in a dream, both of them are only given perhaps a dozen chances a year.

"Keith," Lance whined during their first dream together in almost three months, "are you sure you're sleeping enough? I can promise you that I am sleeping plenty, but I still almost never get to see you. I know that the time difference can make it hard sometimes, but still. My mom is starting to wonder if I'm having a problem. My siblings, on the other hand, think we're having weird dream sex all the time, and that's why it's so hard to wake me up in the mornings."

From where he's sitting amongst a field fashioned from both of their minds, Keith splutters and chokes before he can calm himself down enough to breathe properly. All the while, Lance simply laughs from where he lays beside Keith.

"We-" Keith stutters awkwardly, "we're not. We haven't." Stiffly, he turns to look at Lance. As they've both aged and hit a few growth spurts, Keith's face had gone lost an appreciable amount of youthful softness in favor of more rugged lines. Of course, his cheeks are still accented by a layer of fat that, in their dreams, Lance had gained a love of touching. The way Keith's feathery skin sunk under Lance's fingers almost felt real.

He wondered how it would feel beyond these dreams.

"Well, obviously not," Lance breezed, leaning in closer. "But you can't say that you don't think about it sometimes, can you? We're at that age, after all. My sister Ema's been mumbling about how I'm at 'that age' where all I'm thinking about is sex. I guess she's not wrong, though."

Keith spluttered again in response to Lance's question.

While Lance'e physical growth spurts seemed to fall upon him quicker than he had anticipated - and quicker than his mother had anticipated, too, considering how heartbroken she was about 'how tall her baby boy had grown' and 'where was that cute little boy that was running around the kitchen just a few days ago?' - Lance hadn't been especially preoccupied with any mental changes he might come across. Instead, he focused on how hungry he was all the time.

However, just as his sex ed class had predicted, shortly after he had turned fifteen, he was ganglier than he had hoped while also being filled with, as Ema described it, 'raging hormones'.

There were plenty of pretty girls and handsome guys at his school. Lance would be the last person to deny that. However, whenever he was left to his own devices late at night with nothing concrete to occupy him, Lance's mind always wandered to thoughts of Keith. Often, Lance had dreams involving Keith that he always hoped were soul dreams. However, upon awakening, the fuzziness of the dream's remnants always gave away that they were sadly products of only Lance's mind.

Infuriatingly, yet also wondrously, Keith had grown so well in the past few years. It was all made even worse by the fact that they tended to see each other so infrequently because Lance felt as though there was just one more new attractive thing about Keith to admire each time they dreamed.

Looking at Keith, with his boyishly handsome face and body which, while still lean, clearly had more muscle definition than Lance's, was a sight of both awe and envy. Nonetheless, Lance dreamed of Keith even beyond their soul dreams where he imagined what Keith would look like naked and if he was as much of a clumsy, inexperienced kisser as Lance was. He wondered how Keith would look at him as they lay together.

" _I've_ thought about it, you know," Lance revealed quietly. "I think about it a lot."

Keith studied Lance silently for a few moments before slowly shifting over to lightly stroke Lance's hair. It wasn't a real, physical touch, but it felt enough like one that Lance was almost sufficiently satisfied. "I do too, Lance. Don't think that I don't think about you. I'm always thinking about you."

They stayed like that for some time as Lance allowed himself to indulge in Keith's touch like a pampered kitten. Well, as the youngest in the family, he was bound to be a bit spoiled. At least Keith seemed more than welcome to oblige Lance further.

Still, Lance was also a bit of a restless child, so he eventually pulled his head away so he could look at Keith. Once again, these past few months had worked to sculpt Keith's face handsomely.

"It's so unfair," Lance muttered. "I feel like you managed to skip the awkward teen phase completely, while I'm still as lanky and gawky as ever. When will I grow out of my ugly duckling phase?"

"I don't know what you're talking about," Keith said, lightly running his fingers over Lance's face. Even here they felt calloused. Lance knew that Keith had been pushing himself hard in school to prove himself worthy of a scholarship to be accepted as trainee to the fighter jet class in a Garrison close to Lance, and he wanted to support Keith. Still, Lance hoped he wasn't pushing himself too far. "I think you've always been the prettiest person I've ever met."

Despite how socially awkward Keith was, sometimes he surprised Lance with such lines that warmed up Lance's face even more than his mother's signature soup. He leaned his cheek into Keith's hand. "We haven't even met."

"Haven't we? Aren't we seeing each other right now?"

Lance huffed. "We haven't met in real life, though. For all you know, I could be projecting a fake image of myself to you. Maybe I don't look like this at all."

Keith chuckled and continued to stroke Lance's face. The callouses felt good against Lance's skin. They reminded Lance a bit of Keith's hands, which were always rough from his own efforts to get into the Garrison. Lance wondered if he, too, would be able to accomplish as much. "What are you talking about? I've seen what you look like in real life from our comm conversations and pictures."

"Maybe I edited all of those to look like this."

"Please. I know you wouldn't do that."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. You are my soul mate, after all."

Lance breathed out an amused laugh before relaxing back against the ground. "I can't wait to see you in real life. I'm so annoyed that we live on different planets. It would be so much simpler if we didn't have to invest in interplanetary travel if we wanted to visit each other."

Keith hummed in agreement. "I know, but, in just a few more years, if we both manage to get into the Garrison and train to be space explorers, it'll be much easier. If we work hard enough, then we may even be stationed on the same ship."

Lance whined again. "That's still so far away with so many what if's."

"It's ok. Whatever happens, we'll find each other."

"I hope Shiro can be on the same ship as us, too," Lance mused.

Abruptly, Keith shifted away from Lance.

"What is it?" Lance asked. "I thought you were interested in Shiro after all that I told you about him. Wasn't he the one who ultimately inspired you to aim for fighter jet pilot?"

Keith didn't answer for some time until Lance prompted him further with a light tap of his foot. In response, Keith faintly mumbled something under his breath.

"What was that?" Lance asked. "I didn't quite catch what you were whispering to yourself. I hope you're not talking shit about me right in the middle of one of our rare soul dreams."

"I just wish that you wouldn't talk about someone else after we finally got another dream together in so long," Keith muttered quietly. "I mean, when we talk to each other over the comm you already talk about him enough."

Lance was stunned, but it only lasted mere seconds before he began laughing. "Are you saying you're jealous?"

"You heard what I said, and nowhere did I say that I was jealous."

Lance continued laughing before drawing Keith back to him. "You're ridiculous. You are my soul mate, after all," Lance echoed.

"I know, I know."

"Still, it is hard, isn't it?" Lance murmured. "To not be able to physically be with each other."

"Of course it is."

"But," Lance crept closer to Keith, gently pushing him down so Lance could lean over him, "even if we're not really together here, everything still _feels_ real, doesn't it?"

"Lance..." Keith gusted. Unconsciously, he shifted himself close to meet Lance's body.

"I told you that I think about it a lot, didn't I? And you said that you also think about me all the time," Lance whispered, leaning in closer. "Aren't we both at that age?"

Keith didn't answer, but he slowly shifted his knee in-between Lance's legs.

"We don't have to if you don't want to," Lance said.

"Of course I want to," Keith breathed.

Wordlessly, the two of them moved closer together. Even in the dream, fueled by images and sensations created by their minds, everything felt so good and so right. Even though Keith's hands were heavily calloused, his lips were so soft that Lance was almost afraid he would simply melt right into them. His touch, too, was soft, despite how abrasive and blunt Keith could be.

Lance couldn't fathom how the two of them had gone so long without touching each other like this. Despite the way the two of them fumbled together due to inexperience, coupled with the clacking of foreheads and accidental scrape of teeth, Lance couldn't imagine anything feeling better than this.

Softly, Keith ran his hands up Lance's chest, pushing off Lance's shirt in the process. His hands were warm, and larger than Lance expected. Suddenly self-conscious, Lance began to draw away.

"What is it?" Keith whined sadly. "Do you want to stop?"

"No, I-" Lance stuttered haltingly.

"Then don't go," Keith muttered, voice now muffled by Lance's neck against his lips.

It all felt so nice that Lance suddenly found that he couldn't care anymore, and allowed himself to carelessly tilt his head back to give Keith better access. After some more moments of soft kissing, Lance, too, moved to remove Keith's shirt, and, just as expected, Keith's muscle mass was more noticeable than Keith's.

However, with the way that Keith was looking at him, Lance began to think that, perhaps, it didn't really matter.

Hastily, Lance began to paw at Keith's pants, scrambling to undo the button. "Even in our dreams you chose to wear the most annoying pants," Lance grumbled. "You should've just gone with sweats or something else that would've been easier to get rid of."

Keith chuckled as he withdrew from Lance slightly in order to help in Lance's efforts. "It's not like your pants are any easier, but I'll make sure to keep that in mind next time."

Unfortunately, just as they were about to discard Keith's pants, the edges of the dream began to tremble and splinter away.

"Oh, come on!" Lance exclaimed angrily. "Just as we were about to get somewhere!"

Keith, too, made an annoyed noise as he flopped down to the ground angrily.

"Next time," Lance began, "next time we're doing this right from the start."

"Oh yeah, most definitely," Keith agreed, annoyed. "I won't let this just stop here."

Lance laughed, though it grew more distorted as the dream reached closer to the end. "We're so dumb. We should have done this much sooner."

"We really are."

The last thing Lance saw before he awoke was Keith's smiling face. It was adorned with a flushed, but satisfied smile, and warm eyes that Lance carried with him until the end.

 

* * *

 

 

"Hey, Lance!" Lance opened his eyes to the sight of his sister Ema leaning over him. "You're finally awake! I've been calling you forever." She paused briefly as he looked down at him questioningly. "You're kinda sweaty. Did you have a bad dream?"

"No," Lance breathed, looking down longingly. "No, it was a pretty nice dream, actually."

Ema shrugged. "If you say so. Either way, please wipe that weird smile off your face. It's freaking me out."

Lance could only laugh in response as he swung his legs onto the ground, wondering what his next conversation with Keith would be like.

He hoped Keith was going to blush more than him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> lololol
> 
> also let's pretend for the story's sake that living on different planets doesn't cause an appreciable difference in time because the future


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> remember when i last updated this story literally a year ago..... oops

They shared a dream for the first time in months mere days before their Garrison assignments were set to be announced. As soon as they fell into the dream, tension was already surrounding them, crackling through the mental landscape in bursts of anxiety and uncertainty that stuck fast in Keith's throat no matter how hard he tried to swallow it down.

In the grand scheme of things, not that much time had passed since their last joint dream, and Lance adored speaking to Keith through comm conversations whenever possible. It was never the same, though, voices and images all slightly distorted by the communicators. It was hard keeping up a perfectly crisp line open when talking to someone on another planet.

So, Keith couldn't help at gawk at how much Lance had seemed to change over such a short amount of time. It seemed like Lance had finally managed to gain a bit of weight on his face, his handsomeness still boyish, but now also slowly edging towards masculine now that his face had more shape. Furthermore, while Keith doubted Lance would ever become exceptionally muscular, his wiry frame had begun to give way to reveal a lean build that Keith couldn't stand to look away from.

Keith also noticed that Lance had grown taller than him these past few months, but he wasn't jealous about it. Of course not.

Regardless, Keith was sure that the look on his face was probably ridiculously embarrassing, like those laughable love-struck protagonists in cheesy romance movies that one of his past foster parents had enjoyed watching. Keith even went to the effort to mentally brace himself for a bout of teasing from Lance as a result of his sappiness.

Except, when Lance spoke, there was no teasing lilt to his voice or playful glint in his eyes. In fact, Lance didn't even really speak, so much as let out a pitiful groan as he waddled his way towards Keith. The whole thing would've been much cuter if Keith hadn't been so taken aback.

"Lance?" Keith asked, instinctively wrapping his arms around Lance after the other boy had barreled his way into Keith. As he expected, Lance did feel a bit bulkier in Keith's arms. "What's wrong?"

"Garrison assignments come out in a few days," Lance mumbled against Keith's chest. "What if we don't get accepted to the same places? What if I did so badly on the exam or the interviews that I don't get accepted anywhere?"

Keith tried to come up with comforting words because his soulmate was upset and worried in his arms, even if it wasn't exactly his real arms, but he couldn't get over how warm and soft Lance felt. Either way, he did his best. "It'll be fine. You were so confident about how you did on the exam, remember? And you said all the interviewers thought you were charming. Besides, even if that _is_ the case, you can always try again next year."

To Keith's disappointment, Lance only whipped his head out from where it was previously buried in Keith's chest to look up at Keith through narrowed eyes. "Excuse me? I come to you for support in my time of need, and that's the best you can come up with?"

Lance's tone was incredulous, but his eyes were finally taking on that happy gleam that Keith loved to see, so Keith figured that he hadn't actually said the wrong thing. At least, not entirely. He also let Keith bring the two of them down to sit on the large bed they had thought up, which Keith took as a good sign.

Keith shrugged as he moved his hands up so he could brush his fingers through Lance's hair. It was soft, and Lance leaned into the touch almost immediately. "Was I wrong, though? I'm sure you did fine, and I think you know that, too. You're just letting your nerves get the best of you."

Lance scoffed, but didn't pull away from Keith's slowly roving hands. "Yeah, but that doesn't mean I don't want to be reassured anyway," Lance said, pout sweeping over his face.

"Sorry," Keith said sheepishly, raking his fingers over Lance's scalp even harder because he knew how much Lance enjoyed it, "I'm not very good at comforting others. I never know what to say."

"Yes, that does seem to be the case."

A gentle silence washed over them afterwards. Lance hadn't made any attempts to move away from Keith, and Keith was more than happy to play with Lance's hair, savoring the heat and weight of Lance's body against his own.

Unfortunately, Lance did eventually draw away from Keith. Not completely, though, as he laced his legs together with Keith's. Lance's legs were also more muscular, and also longer, which Keith quite enjoyed.

"Keith..." Lance said, worrying his lip with his teeth. "What if we really aren't able to be at the same Garrison?"

"Then we spend another year apart and just try again later," Keith answered plainly.

"Isn't that a bit sad, though?"

"I guess so, but I think it'll be fine," Keith said, gently pulling Lance towards him again because he couldn't stand to look at Lance's sad gaze anymore. "We are soulmates, after all. It'll all be fine in the end."

"You really think so? You really think us being soulmates is enough?"

"Isn't it?"

Lance looked at Keith in silence. His eyes, for quite possibly the first time, were unreadable, thoughts an absolute mystery to Keith, which Keith found absolutely unfair considering the fact that they were, at the moment, with each other due to their shared consciousness. Shouldn't he be able to get a better idea of whatever Lance was thinking, then?

Apparently not, and Keith couldn't help but grit his teeth at the realization. He only stopped when the pain started seeping down into his jaw, dull but volatile. He racked his brain for something to say to get that _look_ off of Lance's face because it made Keith uncomfortable and unsure, and he hated it.

Thankfully, Keith didn't have to try to fumble through trying to coming up with the right, pretty words to get Lance back to Keith's side. Instead, Lance dropped the look a few moments later before pushing himself back up against Keith before pushing himself down against Keith. Keith landed on his back with Lance following on top of him, gentle and tender. The bed was comfortable, too, much more so than the beds Keith was used to sleeping in.

He wondered if these big, cushion-loaded beds were what Lance were accustomed to. He certainly hoped so.

"You're right," Lance said, satisfied gaze and happy smile glossing over his face once more. Keith's favorite look for Lance, the one he wished he could see all the time. "Everything will be fine. At least, there's no point in worrying about it now if we don't have to."

Keith responded with a low hum as he wrapped his arms back around Lance, this time letting his hands explore Lance's back. Carefully, slowly, like someone approaching a spooked dog on the side of the road without startling it, Keith dipped his fingers underneath Lance's shirt. Lance let out a soft gasp in response, shifting closer to Keith.

Lance's back was smooth and oh-so warm. Every once in awhile, Keith would give Lance a gentle squeeze to feel his muscles work and move as Lance burrowed himself further against Keith. His breath was warm and slightly ragged against Keith's cheek, and Keith wasn't faring much better.

As Keith explored even more, hands moving everywhere, restless and desperate for more, searching for anything he could find, everything Lance was willing to give him, Lance touched in return. It was Lance's turn to run his fingers through Keith's hair before lightly scraping his fingernails against the back of Keith's neck.

"I still can't believe you have a mullet," Lance teased, playing with the hair laying at Keith's nape.

"Please, you love it."

Lance didn't respond. Instead, he sat back and gently pushed Keith's hands away, much to Keith's chagrin. However, seeing as Lance had done so in order to pull of his shirt, Keith found that he didn't mind as much.

"Come on, you too," Lance whined, pawing at Keith's shirt. "I mean, only if you want to, of course, and it's totally fine if you don't," he added quickly. A deep flush overtook Lance's face after the words breathlessly slipped out of his mouth, and, while Keith wanted to tease Lance even more because his blushing face was just so damn cute, he wanted the feeling of Lance's skin on his own even more.

Besides, Keith could feel a flush creeping across his own face, and he wanted to continue on before all the blood rushed to his head.

At least, not the head on top of his shoulders. It was already pooling at his groin pretty quickly.

Wordlessly, Keith hurried to remove his own shirt before making quick work of his pants and underwear.

"Oh," Lance whispered at the sight of Keith, naked and already half-mast. His eyes wandered up and down Keith's body quickly before settling down on Keith's dick. Then, it snapped back up to Keith's face before he blushed even redder. "Oh, wow. You look good. Like, _really_ good."

It was strange to be completely naked in front of Lance for the first time, especially when Lance was still half-clothed, but Keith would be a filthy liar if he said that Lance's flustered appraisal of him didn't make him feel so much better about it.

"I want to see you, too," Keith breathed, moving towards Lance. "Only if you want to, of course," he added with a joking smirk.

"How could I when you look so good?" Lance whined. "I feel like such a bean in comparison, but I don't even have as much shape as a bean."

"Well, it's true that you don't have much of an ass, but I still think you're a pretty good-looking bean. And I think you'll look even better naked."

Lance gaped at Keith for a few moments, eyes wide and brows furrowed, and Keith was beginning to worry that he had said the wrong thing again. But was it his fault that Lance really had a bit of a flat ass?

His worries were assuaged a few seconds later, though, before Lance started laughing. In fact, he laughed so hard that tears collected at the corner of his eyes, and it lasted so long that Keith was starting to go a bit soft.

"Alright, you got me," Lance eventually said once he could finally breathe past his laughter. "I didn't think being insulted would convince me to get naked, but you managed to make it work."

Keith rolled his eyes as he helped Lance finish undressing, per Lance's silent request. "If you recall, I actually complimented you. For the rest, how can it be an insult when it's true?"

Lance laughed again, his eyes laced with that pretty glimmer, and that made it all more than worth it. Lance's body, on display and under Keith's touch, was an amazing added bonus.

This time, Keith was the one who was pushing Lance down on the bed as he crawled over Lance's body, sprawled out. The tan of Lance's skin contrasted prettily against the cream-colored sheets, and the breathy mewls Lance let out were everything Keith had ever wanted.

Looking down at Lance, running his hands greedily across Lance's body, fueled by the knowledge that Lance wanted him in return, Keith wondered how Lance could ever see himself as just a bean, of all things.

Lance was pretty and _his_ , his soulmate.

That was more than enough, and it was everything. All that fueled Keith, what motivated and moved him.

All that he truly had.

Lance, too, was eager to learn more about Keith's body. He kissed fervently, nuzzled his face against Keith's like a well-fed kitten, and pulled Keith closer to himself by throwing his legs around Keith's body, locking his ankles behind Keith so that he could use them to drag Keith down, desperately seeking more skin on his own.

Keith was beyond happy to comply. He even went a step further, pushing his hips down to grind his dick against Lance's, rhythmic and determined.

" _Fuck_ , Keith," Lance moaned, pushing back against Keith frantically. "Why are you so good at this?"

"I've thought about this a lot," Keith admitted in-between nips at Lance's neck, slim and exposed for Keith's attention. "Plenty of my dreams were like this, but with less laughing and more moaning."

"Don't worry, I'm sure we'll get there soon," Lance said with a light chuckle, hands stroking up and over Keith's chest, thumbing at Keith's nipples absent-mindedly.

"I hope so. Who knows when the dream will fall apart this time."

With that reminder, their movements became more urgent. Keith knew vaguely how anal sex worked, but not much beyond general basics. Still, he hoped that they would be able to make it go fairly smooth with their dream consciousness.

"Here," Lance said. As if reading Keith's mind, he handed Keith a convenient bottle of lube.

"Are you sure?" Keith asked, stroking Lance's ass lightly. "You want me to do it?"

"Yes, _yes_ ," Lance moaned. "I've thought about this a lot, too. About you inside me."

A fresh burst of arousal shot through Keith straight to his dick, and he groaned hungrily as he quickly moved to coat his fingers and Lance's opening with lube. If Lance wanted this, who was Keith to complain?

He didn't think he would even be capable of refusing Lance of something like this.

"No condom?" Keith questioned.

"What's the point? It's a dream. We have time for that when we finally get the chance to do this in real life."

In real life. Having sex with Lance in real life. As much as Keith believed that it didn't really matter if their meeting was a bit delayed, he still wanted it. He wanted Lance, in the flesh, in his arms, on his bed, in his life.

Thought, at the moment, Keith wanted nothing more than to sink into Lance, fast and deep. He knew he couldn't, though, and instead started with a single finger. Lance hissed slightly at the intrusion, but otherwise seemed unperturbed. Keith inserted two more fingers shortly afterwards, moving them slowly in response to Lance's not-so-subtle flinch away.

Keith tried his best to take it slow and give Lance ample time to get used to the fingers inside of him, but Lance only lasted a few minutes before he began whining and begging for more.

"Keith, please," Lance moaned, pushing back against Keith's fingers furiously. "Give to me, _please_."

"Lance," Keith whispered, "I feel like we should give it a few more minutes."

"But what if the dream falls before then?" Lance gusted, looking up at Keith with needy eyes. "Who knows when we'll get our next chance to do this? I'm ready enough."

While Keith knew he should've probably argued against it, Keith didn't disagree with the possibility of losing the dream. Besides, it wasn't like he didn't want to be inside of Lance.

So, he slowly removed his fingers in order to slather his dick with plenty of lube before resting Lance's legs on his shoulders. Lance's legs were even prettier up close, and Keith made sure to lavish them with kisses before turning his focus towards positioning himself at Lance's opening.

The sight of his dick pressing against Lance's ass was more enticing than Keith could have ever imagined, but watching his cock disappear inside of Lance was too erotic for words.

Lance's face, however, was scrunched up in a wince as Keith pushed into him. At Keith's hesitance, he looked up with an encouraging smile and tight grip on Keith's arm. "It's fine. Keep going."

Keith didn't completely believe him, but he didn't want to get into an argument about it at a moment like this. Lance's expression, past his barely-believable facade of casual composure, told Keith that this was something he was determined to do, even if Keith had qualms about it.

With that staring him in the face, Keith figured he might as well just keep going while trying to be as gentle as possible.

To do so, Keith was prepared to remain still and wait for Lance to get used to having something inside him, no matter how badly Keith wanted to thrust wildly into the inviting, tight heat that was Lance.

Except, Lance wasn't having it. Using his legs as leverage, he pushed Keith forward and, while it wasn't enough to actually move Keith much, Keith got the message. He started thrusting, slowly and shallowly at first, and, even though it wasn't nearly as intense as Keith wanted, it was still amazing. His mind of swimming, and he wished Lance felt the same.

After a few more thrusts, though, Lance's slightly pained face turned into something sweeter, pleased. As Keith's movements gradually grew bigger and deeper, Lance's eyes fell half-lidded as his mouth opened into a silent moan.

One particularly harsh thrust, snappy and powerful, had Lance moaning aloud for the first time, and Keith could feel Lance's legs tensing over Keith's shoulders.

" _God_ , yes," Lance groaned, pushing back against Keith's thrusts desperately. "Yes, more of that, please."

Keith would be the last person to refuse such wanton requests. Spurred by Lance's breathless mewls and heady growls, Keith started thrusting as he pleased, quick snaps of his hips as he used one hand to keep a loose grip Lance's hips, keeping him from moving too much from the force of Keith's thrusts.

In turn, Lance reached upwards to pull Keith's head down to lock him into a sloppy kiss, caught between showering Keith's mouth was attention before pulling away to let out a string of content moans.

In the end, neither of them lasted much longer than that, so maybe that didn't have to worry about the dream ending before they finished after all. Keith came first with a long, low groan, getting out a few last haphazard thrusts before he came inside Lance. Lance came a few moments later, fueled by a few jerky pumps of his dick by Keith's hand.

Even on his spent dick, the feeling of Lance tightening around him was absolutely mind-blowing and, if it had happened just a bit later, Keith had no doubt that the feeling would have left him ready for another round. Honestly, even just Lance's face, tensed up in pleasure as he came, would probably have been more than enough to entice Keith for more.

Unfortunately, they didn't have enough time for another round. The rest of their dream passed by with the two of them cuddling together quietly, Keith playing with Lance's hair as Lance traced aimless pictures across Keith's chest. Then, slowly, the dream crumbled around them, their surroundings melting together, then apart.

"I can't wait," Lance whispered, his voice distorted by the fading dream, "to finally meet you in real life."

"Me too," Keith murmured, placing one last kiss against Lance's forehead. "It'll happen, I promise. Everything will be alright."

"I hope so."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> wow i can't believe i finally updated lol'
> 
> anyway, let me know what you think!! i might edit my previous chapters a bit, maybe not. if i do, the edits won't be anything too major in terms of story, so don't worry about having to re-read them!


	6. Chapter 6

When Lance finally got his Garrison assignment, the first person he told was Shiro.

"Shiro!" Lance exclaimed, watching as Shiro drowsily blinked his eyes open at the sudden call. Lance wanted to feel more guilty for bothering Shiro, but he was bursting with too much starry-eyed excitement to feel all that bad. Besides, once Shiro had managed to pull himself out of his sleepy stupor, he looked plenty eager to hear what Lance had to say. "I got into Earth's Galaxy Garrison! I'm going to be with you again!"

Shiro's eyes glinted happily as he smiled back at Lance. "That's amazing! I knew you could do it. I bet everyone else is happy for you, too."

"Oh, I haven't told anyone else yet," Lance admitted sheepishly. "I guess I just got so excited knowing that I'd being going to school with you that it slipped my mind."

Shiro laughed, but it wasn't mocking at all. That was enough to quell most of the embarrassment rising in Lance, and that was one of the things he liked and missed the most about Shiro.

"Well, don't let me keep you from telling everyone else. We'll talk more later, promise."

The next couple of people Lance informed were his family. His dad whooped in joy, patting his back heartily in congratulations. His mom, on the other hand, couldn't stop herself from tearing up at the news, despite how fiercely she praised Lance.

"Oh, Lance," she whimpered, clutching his head tightly to her chest as she cried over him. "I'm happy for you; I really am. It's just hard for me to see my baby finally getting ready to leave the nest. You're the last one to go, after all."

It took more effort from Lance than he would've liked to admit to keep himself from also crying in the face of his mom's tears. He had gotten a taste of goodbye's from his siblings as they all, one by one, left the house for something more. It was finally his turn now, and it was harder than he had anticipated.

His doubts were assuaged quite a bit, though, when he finally got the chance to tell Keith about it.

"See, you were worried about nothing," Keith said. "I knew you'd be able to get in, and now we'll finally be together." Despite the nonchalance in his voice, Lance could hear the sharp flicker of relief that floated through the air in the moments between Keith's words.

That was fine, though. Lance felt the same.

"And we'll both be in the piloting course!" Lance exclaimed. "I hope we have a lot of classes together, so we can _really_ see which one of us is the better pilot." Lance puffed up his chest, grinning. Lance, admittedly, was still a bit of a beanpole, despite all the meat Lance was eating. But, if Lance just puffed himself up a bit, then his lankiness was hardly noticeable.

At least, that was what he liked to tell himself.

Keith, unfazed, just rolled his eyes. "Yeah, yeah, whatever you say. If you really want me to kick your non-existent butt that badly, I'l gladly do it."

Lance gasped in mock offense, leaning towards his screen menacingly. "I'll have you know, I've been doing plenty of squats since you so rudely said that my ass was flat! I'm going to have the best butt by the time we start training at the Garrison, so it'll be my round and _perky_ butt that you'll be wishing you could kick!"

"It's only been a week since then, so I bet you still have a long way to go. Besides, everyone knows that deadlifts are really what build butts."

"Whatever! It's not like your butt is all that great either."

Keith finally smiled in response. One of his big, wide smiles that he couldn't control that Lance absolutely adored. Lance had noticed that Keith, while sweet and sincere at his core, was also a bit of a sullen guy. However, that just meant that moments where Keith was truly content were all the more satisfying.

So, Lance couldn't help but beam back. "But you are going to be in the piloting program, right?" Lance asked before quickly adding, "Of course, if you really don't want to, I'm not going to make you."

"Yeah, I'll be in the piloting program," Keith said. "It'l be nice. To be able to fly and have a way to get away from everything, you know." He shrugged, eyes darting away for a moment before finding their way back onto the screen. "At least, that's what I imagine piloting a ship is like."

That far-off, wistful melancholy had rooted itself back into Keith's face, and Lance hated it. Keith was most beautiful when he looked happy, after all. Not that he wasn't always attractive, even with that ridiculous mullet of his.

"Well then," Lance began, voice loud and commanding in an attempt to draw Keith's attention away from whatever thoughts were plaguing him, "What do you think being at the Garrison is like?"

They talked for awhile about what it might be like, living in the dorms together, meeting new people from other faraway planets, and how exciting piloting classes would be. Shiro had bit somewhat mum about the details of Garrison-life, but Lance figured that was just because he was enjoying it so much that he wanted to keep it a surprise.

Or something like that.

As it turned out, being at the Garrison really wasn't quite as exciting as Lance had hoped. At least, not in the beginning. Orientation was a blur, and their schedules were so jam-packed that Lance didn't even have time to find Keith or Shiro. He did manage to become friends with one of the other guys in his orientation group, though. An agreeable guy named Hunk who wasn't like the other kids, already sizing everyone else up as competition.

Finally, after two exhausting weeks of being run here and there through the Garrison, Lance scrounged up just enough free time to sneak away from his nosy roommate, Rolo, in search of Keith. Lance considered himself a pretty good sneak. When he was a kid, he had been so good at slipping under his family's watchful eyes during his quest to palm a few extra cookies for an after-dessert dessert.

Of course, his mother usually caught him in the act, but his mom was different. She was special, and the instructors patrolling for errant kids hadn't noticed him in the slightest.

Score one for Lance, all before classes had even started.

Except all that bravado crashed to the wayside when he finally found Keith, leaving behind a want and desire so strong that it left him parched and at a loss for words. It was strange, being so taken by Keith when Lance had already seen him through screens and met him in their dreams. Yet, there it was, and there _Keith_ was, after all those years.

So pretty it hurt, but not enough to stop Lance from stepping forward.

The only explanation Lance could think of for how _different_ Keith looked was that Keith's own mental image of himself was obviously skewed and did him no justice. In his dreams, Keith's eyes had been mostly gray, and, through monitors and screens, it was hard to pick up many subtleties in hues and shades.

In real life, though, Keith's eyes were a slate gray dipped in a pool of lilac glaze, fine little baubles polished to perfection. They caught the dim lights in the halls so beautifully that Lance nearly cried just from the effort of meeting Keith's gaze.

Still, Lance doubted anything short of a full-frontal assault would be enough to tear his eyes away. Even then, it would probably be too late. He was just too enamored.

Keith's body was also more toned than Lance had thought. Even his mullet looked half-decent in real life, somehow. Worse than that, however, was how Keith looked younger and gentler than Lance expected. It gave him a touch of sweetness that made Lance want to pull him close, closer, and then closed. A fascination that Lance wasn't used to.

Quite frankly, it frightened him.

That momentary uneasiness passed, though, when Keith also stepped forward, eyes wide and wondering. Then, it was replaced with another crash and burn of anxiety, fueled by the fear that perhaps Lance looked worse in real life than in dreams on through the screen.

Maybe he had unknowingly projected an idealized version of himself to Keith in their dreams. Would Keith feel deceived? Would he be disappointed with Lance, as intensely as Lance had been captivated with Keith?

He wasn't sure, so all Lance could do was brace himself for _something_ , even if he didn't know that that something was.

And what he got was Keith's hesitant voice, quietly chipping through the stunned silence between them in the even quieter hall. "Lance? Are you... disappointed with me?"

"What?" Lance blurted out without even thinking. "What are you talking about? What do you mean, 'am I disappointed with you'?" The question was irrevocably and irrefutably so inconceivable that he could hardly see straight with how fast his mind was whirring against such an odd question.

Keith, on the other hand, didn't seem to quite understand what Lance was going through. Fair enough - Lance didn't entirely get it, either.

"Well, I mean, you've just been looking at me for awhile, and I couldn't tell what you were thinking, so I thought maybe you were thinking about how unimpressive I am, or something," Keith muttered, looking away from Lance.

It took a moment for Lance to fully process what Keith said, and the silence stretches out between them once again, lazy and languid like a pampered kitten. Then, it startled away at the sound of Lance's sharp laughter. It was far too loud as it echoed far over and around them, and someone was bound to find them if they stayed standing there.

Hastily, Keith grabbed ahold of the collar of Lance's shirt before dragging him back into his room, closing the door behind him with a soft click.

"What are you doing?" Keith hissed, flicking his mullet Lance's direction. "Trying to get us in trouble before our first day of classes even begins?"

"I'm sorry," Lance choked out between the remaining few tufts of laughter he couldn't keep down. "It's just - that was so funny."

"What was?" Keith asked, still bristling.

"The fact that you thought I could possibly be disappointed with you." Lance paused, moving towards Keith.

Keith finally calmed down a bit, losing the edge roving over him like a beast scouring for his next meal. He didn't respond for some time. Instead, he walked forward, meeting Lance stride for stride.

"I was actually worried about the same thing," Lance confessed. His hand brushed against Keith's. They don't hold hands, not yet, but they let their skin meet the other's. Keith is warm, solid, and _real_ in a way that he had never felt before, and Lance hadn't even realized until this moment that their dreams, as realistic as they had felt, were still just dreams. "I was worried that, after seeing me in real life for the first time, maybe I wasn't as attractive or good as you thought I was."

"No," Keith breathed out. His fingers trembled as he finally curled them around Lance's. Lance met them eagerly, and let them fall together. "No, oh Lance, no, _never_. God Lance, you're fucking _beautiful_."

"Yeah?" Lance asked because he couldn't not ask. He needed to hear it, wanted to be a little greedy, even if he didn't deserve it. It was selfish of him to needle Keith for reassurance, and he shouldn't have relied on the fact Keith was his soulmate to ask for more, but he did anyway.

Lance had always liked to be praised.

"You mean that?"

"Yes, yes, you're everything and more."

It was almost painful how reverent Keith sounded, and, once again, a touch scary, but Lance swallowed the compliment down anyway like a starving dog. "You too, Keith. You're so much more than I had thought, than I had ever dreamed about."

Lance wasn't sure who initiated it, but, in the end, he didn't really care all that much. All he could really focus on was the way Keith's lips, the real ones in his waking moments that are soft and warm, felt on his own. The tumbled onto the bed unceremoniously, kissing and moving over and against each other for some time before Lance's mind snaps to attention.

"Keith," Lance hissed, nudging Keith off of him. Keith whined in protest, but acquiesced within seconds. "We can't do this. Your roommate - "

"Don't have one," Keith said, cutting Lance off.

"You have your own room?" Lance asked, though a quick survey of the dark room showed that Keith did, in fact, have his own room.

"Yeah. They said it was a reward for doing so well on the entrance exam and all that stuff."

"Oh," Lance responded dumbly. He had known that Keith already had a talent for piloting, but he didn't know he was apparently good enough to get a single room as a first-year cadet.

Keith didn't seem all that concerned about it, though. "So, it's ok, right? To keep kissing and stuff."

With a proposition like that, spoken so nicely, Lance couldn't find it in him to care about it all that much, either. With a nod, Lance agreed, welcoming Keith with open arms as he fell forwards back on top of Lance. The weight of Keith's body on his, too, was different from their dreams. Not enough for Lance to be able to say exactly how, but just enough that he could feel just how much they both had been missing out.

However, their dreams together still proved useful. The way they kissed and moved together was smooth, practiced from the copious amount of time they had spent kissing in the last handful of dreams they had together. Lance knew with the way Keith kissed, how he liked to use a fair bit of tongue, and how Keith enjoyed grinding with sharp, pointed rolls of his hips that left Lance breathless and scrambling for more.

At the same time, Lance knew how shy Keith could be with certain things, such as letting himself be touched as much as Lanced wanted to touch. Just touching. Lance loved it, though, loved the feeling of Keith under and all over him. He wanted it, and he wanted it with skin.

"Come on, Keith," Lance whispered in-between kisses, pawing at Keith's shirt. "Take your clothes off? Please?"

"Only if you take yours off, too," Keith groaned against Lance's skin, words reverberating against Lance's collarbones.

"Of course. I wouldn't deprive you of the treat that is me."

Keith scoffed but was undeterred. The two of them carelessly pulled of their clothes, and, as soon as they were naked, Lance plastered himself onto Keith with a shaky sigh, burying his face into the crook of Keith's neck as they sat together. He didn't even realize he was crying until Keith's hand was buried in his hair, blunt fingernails grazing gently over his scalp.

"I'm not - I'm not crying because I'm upset or because I don't like it," Lance whispered. "I'm just... overwhelmed."

"I know," Keith whispered back. "I know."

"I just want you to touch me. Everywhere, anywhere. I want to feel you all over me." Despite the fact that they were already flush against one another, Lance pushed his chest even further agains Keith's, desperate for more. Keith pushed back and then pulled, letting Lance tumble on top of Keith gracelessly. Keith only let out a brief huff at the sudden weight before interlacing his legs with Lance's.

Keith's hands, as they finally made their way all over Lance's body like he wanted, were rougher than in their dreams - far more calloused, dry and peeling in a few spots. Lance's hands were much smoother in comparison. The most manual labor Lance had ever done was play sports and mow the lawn. He wondered what Keith had done to get his hands so worn-down and weathered.

Except, he didn't wonder about it as much once Keith went back to kissing him. Lance really loved kissing Keith. Most of all because he knew the difference between the way Keith kissed in the beginning, tentative and unsure, to how he kissed now with so much passion and purpose.

Lance, on the other hand, also greatly enjoyed touching. Keith's body felt just as toned as it looked, more so than Lance had realized through their dreams together. It was a pleasure to feel the way Keith's muscles twitched and flexed under Lance's touch, so out of Keith's control. The way Keith panted, too, quiet little noises that filled the air like fleeting sunbursts, sounded different than what Lance had heard during their dreams.

Another thing that Lance hadn't expected to be so _much_ was the way Keith smelled. He smelled like a person, flesh and a bit of sweat, but also deeper than that. Keith was surrounded by a faint smell of wood embers and tree sap carried by a dry, sandy breeze that tickled teasingly at Lance's nose. It was like nothing that Lance had ever smelled before in his house in Cuba, but it was so familiar and _home_ that he couldn't get enough of it.

The differences weren't all related to Keith, though. The way Lance reacted was also new. Every single touch from Keith felt like burning pinpricks that left icy tendrils in their wake, yearning for more fire to come and rest again. Lance felt hotter, more lightheaded, so much needier than ever before despite the fact that they're already so tightly pressed together that there's nothing more that they could possibly give each other.

And Lance was still crying. With every stroke of Keith's fingers, each fleeting kiss that he drops all over Lance - on his eyelashes, the tip of his nose, over the back of his hand, across his arm, over his shoulder, and up to the shell of Lance's ear - Lance couldn't help but let out a shuddering, wet breath as he locked his legs tighter around Keith's.

In fact, he was so overwhelmed with everything that it took Lance some time to realize that Keith, too, was crying.

"Keith," Lance gusted, rubbing his nose against Keith's. "Oh, Keith. Keith, I don't - I didn't - " Lance didn't even know what he was trying to say, but Keith seemed to understand it well enough.

"Yeah," Keith breathed in response, moving his face away from Lance's to bury it in Lance's hair. He nuzzled against it so gently that it had Lance crying even harder, embarrassingly enough. "Lance, fuck, you're amazing."

"But I haven't done anything," Lance joked, dropping sugar plum kisses against the strain of Keith's neck.

"It doesn't matter. You don't need to do anything."

They stayed together for some time, just touching, exploring, learning what it meant to touch, kiss, and just be with someone solid and truly there. Everything was so intense that Lance wasn't fully aware of his erection until Keith's hand finally snaked its way down to Lance's cock.

The roughness of his palm felt better than Lance anticipated. Lance arched into the touch involuntarily, gasping loudly and gripping hard onto Keith's shoulders. Keith simply chuckled before slowly moving his hand, fisting Lance's dick lightly.

"Keith, wait," Lance whined, moving away slightly, much to Keith's displeasure. "I want to touch you too."

It took them a few minutes to disentangle themselves enough for both of their hands to fit in the meager space they were willing to create between them. Still, despite the woeful decrease of skin on his own, Lance didn't regret being able to finally feel Keith's dick in his hand. It felt heftier and pulsed just a bit, which made Lance feel even headier at the idea that Keith was so hard and ready because of Lance.

Keith's hand, now slick with a layer of spit, started moving again, slow and rhythmic, and Lance gladly joined him. It felt good - of course it did - and Keith knew exactly what he was doing, thanks to his experience with jerking Lance off in their dreams. Lance could only hope that Keith felt the same way about his technique, though the way he panted and groaned against Lance's shoulder seemed to be a good sign.

And yet, even as Lance's orgasm approached, it wasn't enough.

"Keith," Lance moaned. "Let's - let's rut together, or something. We don't have anything to use to actually have sex, but we can still do that."

"You don't think what we're doing right now is considered 'having sex'?" Keith asked with a sly grin.

"You know what I mean. No one's going to be inside anyone today.

"That's ok, though," Keith replied, eagerly pulling his hand off of Lance's dick in favor of pushing him down. "That's fine."

Keith slicked both of them up with a generous amount of spit because that was all they had. It's enough, though, and the slide of Lance's dick against Keith's is absolutely delicious and smooth, and he can't get enough; he wanted it to last forever.

All good things must come to an end, though, and Lance came almost embarrassingly fast. At least Keith ended up coming at about the same time. He collapsed on top of Lance haphazardly, sweaty and breathless, but Lance found the extra weight on top of him more comforting than annoying. Regardless, Keith pulled himself away soon afterwards, trudging off to the small attached bathroom that he apparently also had before returning with a damp washcloth.

To be honest, Lance wanted to feeling of Keith's calloused hands on his body instead of the rough fluff of the cheap towel, but Keith looked so worn out. Lance, too, could feel the post-orgasm drowsiness overtaking him. So, when Keith flopped back down onto the bed with a soft grunt, Lance was more than happy to just cuddle with him, lazily wrapping his legs back with Keith's.

Keith's eyes were a bit hard to see through the darkness of the room, but they still shined as Keith looked at him. "Lance," was all Keith said, in a reverent exhale that left Lance's fingertips tingling.

"Hi," Lance responded lightly, suddenly feeling awkward now that he was in front of Keith, in person, without the raging flush of arousal creeping through him.

However, that all disappeared when Keith, with softening eyes and the prettiest tilt of a smile, answered back with his own quiet, "Hey."

It was fine. Keith was his soulmate, and here they finally were, as fate had intended.

Maybe it was just that easy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> they finally meet! and immediately fall into bed together haha
> 
> how could they not, though? they're hormonal teenage boys after all
> 
> anyway, thanks for reading! please let me know what you think <3
> 
> also come find my at me new tumblr
> 
> https://fever-d-dreams.tumblr.com


	7. Chapter 7

Lance was far prettier in person than Keith had expected. His smiles were wider, eyes brighter and swirling with loud emotion. Lance, apparently, was not exactly good at hiding what he was truly feeling. He was softer, too, with hair that Keith's fingers sank into with ease. Even his mannerisms were soft. Lance was quite lively, but there was also a gentleness around him that never failed to ease Keith.

It was too bad that Keith rarely got the chance to see Lance much outside of their secret after-hour rendezvouses. Lance had been assigned to the beginner pilot classes with the majority of their classmates, while Keith was sent to join the advanced class. If he had the choice, Keith would've gladly attended classes with Lance, just for the chance to be beside him for a little longer. Of course, the Garrison had scoffed at Keith the one time he had asked before thrusting his uniform into his hands and sending him on his way with a stern glance.

At least this gave Keith to chance to meet Lance's elusive, yet beloved, Shiro.

"Keith!" Shiro exclaimed, bounding over to Shiro with large steps. Lance hadn't been exaggerating when he had described Shiro as 'a friendly giant'. "It's so nice to finally meet you, though I never thought that it would be as student and teacher."

"Yeah," Keith mumbled awkwardly. "Me neither."

"Lance never told me that you were such a good pilot. Your entrance exam performance and scores were outstanding! Have you always wanted to be a pilot?" Shiro continued excitedly.

"Not really," Keith said. "I just - I started getting interested and practicing a lot after Lance told me that it was his dream to join the Galaxy Garrison. I wanted to be able to meet him soon, and I thought the easiest way to do that would be to also join."

Shiro looked at Keith for a touch longer, considering, before his gentle smile returned. "Well, I'm glad that the two of you were finally able to meet each other. Lance is really happy about it, too."

Keith nodded, but he was interrupted by the beginning of class before he could respond. Around him him, there weren't many other students, and there were even fewer that were around his age. One of them, though, a plain-looking boy whose name was something like Grifford, was assigned as Keith's partner.

"Kogane, what are you doing?" Grifford exclaimed as Keith swerved their simulation ship sharply to the left, knocking Grifford off-balance. His grip slipped from his own controls, and the simulation shook as it began spiraling out of control. At least Grifford was skilled enough to scramble back into place before they crashed. "You have to talk to me before you pull stunts like that!"

Keith just shrugged. He tilted the ship to the right, this time, but slower for Grifford's sake. "There was no time. If I hadn't done that, we would've been hit by the enemy's attack."

"How could you possibly know that? They _just_ popped up on screen," Grifford argued.

Keith shrugged again. He was not in the mood to argue, even though he was clearly right. So, the next time the enemies attacked, Ketih did nothing. Instead, he said blandly, "The enemies are attacking us from our right."

"What ene - " Grifford's words were cut off as the simulation trembled violently around them. Their ship was quickly sinking down, and, at this point, there was little they could do about it. Grifford clambered with the control, but it was already over.

Keith felt a hint of satisfaction at seeing Grifford's downcast expression.

"Alright, that's enough!" Shiro called out with a clap of his hands. "Your ship has been taken down by an enemy fleet. Now, class, what do you think these two did wrong?"

An older girl raised her hand. "Their teamwork was poor."

"Exactly," Shiro said. He turned to face Keith and Grifford. "You two are both promising young pilots, individually, but there's no point to that if you can't work well with others. Even in moments like those, there's always a way to communicate with others. You just need to learn how."

"Or maybe Grifford can just learn how to pay attention to his surroundings," Keith scoffed.

"My name is _Griffin_! James Griffin."

"Maybe _Griffin_ can learn how to pay attention his surroundings."

Shiro simply sighed. "Alright, that's enough. Class dismissed, everyone."

Griffin swiveled away from Keith with a huff before collecting his stuff and leaving. Keith was just about to do the same before being stopped by Shiro.

"Keith, you really should be nicer to your classmates," Shiro said patiently. "You never know which one of them you're going to be actually working with in the future. Besides, when you're so far from home, it's nice to have some friends who can support you."

"I don't need friends," Keith grumbled. "I have Lance."

Shiro was giving Keith that strange, almost pitying look again, and Keith really didn't appreciate it. "Keith, you can't just rely on Lance so much. You need to open up to others, too."

"But Lance is enough for me. He's mine. My soulmate."

Licking his lips, Shiro opened his mouth, as if he were prepared to continue speaking. In the end, he sighed and placed a warm hand on Keith's shoulders. "Well, I can't force you to do anything, but I hope that you keep my words in mind. Life can be pretty lonely, even with a soulmate, you know. It's nice to have others you can talk to."

Silently, Keith nodded. He could see why Lance would like someone like Shiro so much; he was a nice, caring guy who looked at people kindly and wanted the best for them. Handsome, too, if Keith were being honest.

Keith wondered if he should be more like that, too. If Lance wanted him to be.

Lance, though, seemed happy enough with Keith as he was, based on how eager he was to flop down and cuddle beside Keith at the end of each week.

"Ugh, this week was even worse than usual," Lance groaned, nuzzling his face deeper into the base of Keith's neck. His hair tickled the bottom of Keith's nose, and it was nice. "Iverson has it out for me, I swear. But, just because he doesn't get my sense of humor doesn't mean he has to be so mean to me. Don't you think?"

Keith didn't respond at first, instead opting to briefly readjust himself so he can interlace his legs with Lance's. Lance was smooth, warm, and so nice from where he lay half-sprawled over Keith, and Keith wanted to have as much contact with him as possible.

"I don't know," Keith teased, flashing Lance a sharp grin, "maybe it's a good thing for you to have someone to whip you into shape. I know that your family spoiled you, after all."

Lance flicked his head up, mouth agape in a parody of offense. His hand flew to his chest dramatically before he spoke. "Excuse you, I am not spoiled!"

"You're a little spoiled. You still have your lucky baby blanket after all, with a patch sewed on from every other member of your family."

"That's not me being spoiled. That's just me being sentimental."

Keith laughed, pulling Lance's head down gently by the nape of his neck to place a kiss on the corner of Lance's mouth. Beneath his lips, Keith could feel Lance's frown wavering with mirth.

Keith loved these moments, where all of the little things that made up Lance were his. It was nice, to have something for himself.

Finally, Lance laughed, too. Keith swallowed the sound down, and it tasted like happiness in the back of his throat.

"Alright, maybe I'm a little bit spoiled," Lance conceded with a smile. "But how can I help it, when I have people like you and Shiro and my family all around me?"

"Well, now you have Iverson, too."

Huffing out a chuckle, Lance settled himself back down to rest his head on Keith's upper chest. They stayed like that for some time, quietly and simply there to bask in each other.

It didn't last long, though. Lance loved leaving butterfly kisses behind whenever he could, as evidenced by the ones he was now fluttering across Keith's collarbones. Keith, on the other hand, adored the feeling of Lance underneath the palm of his hand. So, in turn, he was stroking here are there, slowly creeping his hands up Lance's shirt, down Lance's pants.

"Oh," Lance moaned, pressing closer, nose gracing the side of Keith's neck. "That's good."

"Yeah?" Keith whispered, letting his hand roam down even further.

"Oh yeah."

And, more than anything, Keith really loved making love to Lance. When he had first learned about sex, Keith had thought the phrase 'making love' was way too flowery for such a carnal thing. Except, when he was touching Lance, now naked underneath Keith, kissing Lance all over and slipping slick fingers into Lance's entrance, it wasn't nearly sweet enough to explain how he felt.

Being able to listen to Lance's soft moans and mewls as he lay beneath Keith, breathless and wanting, was incredible, far more incredible than Keith thought it would be. Feeling the heat of Lance's skin, and then the warm wetness of Lance around Keith's dick, open and carefully lubricated, was beyond anything Keith had the ability to explain.

It was everything and so much, yet never truly enough.

Still, the sight of Lance coming, long neck bared and eyelashes fluttering as he moaned, along with the sensation of Lance clenching around Keith tight and rhythmically, was so close to enough that Keith could taste bliss in the aftermath of his own orgasm.

Chest heaving, Lance stroked a lazy hand up and down Keith's sweat-streaked chest in their afterglow. His voice was quiet, but laced with fondness as he spoke. "See? You spoil me so good." He smiled, and it was dazzling.

Keith smiled back and hoped that it was even a fraction as beautiful as Lance's. "I can't help it."

"Well, at least I have Iverson now."

 

* * *

 

 

Apparently, Lance also had other people in his life now. Keith was sure that most of them weren't like Iverson who, according to Lance, was 'a balls-busting old geezer with a superiority complex'. For example, Lance actually enjoyed being around his new friends, and Keith began to hate the fact he was in a different class even more.

"Keith, why don't you come hang out with us? I'm sure Hunk and Pidge would be more than happy to meet you and stuff!" Lance was poking away at the reconstituted meal in front of him.

Keith pushed around his own food. His, though, was actual real food made by real people. A special perk for being in the advanced fighter pilot class, they told me. Of course, that meant that, whenever they had the chance to eat together, Lance was the one eating most of Keith's food.

That was fine with him, though. It was nice to see his soulmate pleased.

Except, going along with being in the special people class, Keith's schedule was becoming increasingly busy. The Garrison higher-ups seemed to be gearing up for something that they hadn't bothered to actually tell anyone about. Still, it wasn't like they were all dumb enough to not feel it coming.

So, with a sad sigh, Keith had to respond with a, "Sorry, Lance. I don't think I'll be free then. They want me to join in on some extra practice sessions, or something."

Lance sighed as he now set to work to pick apart Keith's food. "You're always busy with your super special, cool fighter pilot training.

"I know," Keith soothed. Or, at least he tried to. Lance didn't look particularly soothed. "If I could, I would turn them down, but I don't really have a choice."

"Oh, I don't want you to turn them down," Lance said. "I wouldn't, if I were in your position."

Keith shrugged. "I just think it's a bit excessive."

"Well, that isn't totally wrong, I guess," Lance mused. "Shiro's been really busy, too. I wonder what they're trying to do. It's obvious there's something going on."

Keith agreed, but he didn't really want to talk about this anymore. He wanted to talk more about Lance and all the things that made him happy. So, they spent the rest of their short lunch break talking about Lance's new friends.

Hunk seemed like a nice guy, very open and friendly, even if he was a bit jittery. Apparently, he had puked during one of their training simulations, docking them a few points. Pidge, on the other hand, was apparently more level-headed, but even more fickle than Lance, at times.

Regardless, they were both good to Lance, and that was enough for Keith.

Keith, on the other hand, didn't have many people in his class he had bonded with. Most of them were older and not entirely interested in him. Kinkade was alright - quiet, but tolerable and competent. Liefsdottir was possibly Keith's favorite; she was smart, capable, and straight-to-the-point. She was all Keith could ever want in a teammate.

Except, the person Keith was most often paired up with was Griffin. He was actually fairly talented, but haughty, intelligent, yet rash. He grated on Keith in ways he was unused to. Unsurprisingly, Keith didn't particularly like him.

Shiro had simply laughed at that as he ruffled Keith's hair. "That's because he's just like you."

"As if I'm anything like him!" Keith had denied, vehement and offended.

Shiro had laughed even more, and Keith found it hard to remain angry in the face of Shiro laughing.

Shiro, too, wasn't bad at all. As Keith spent more time with him, during class and all the other extra lessons that were being foisted upon him, Keith found that Shiro was probably the most likable of them all.

He was kind, patient, and beyond excellent at piloting. A living legend amongst the Garrison, even on Earth as a whole. He was a an ideal who still managed to be just a man. Sometimes, when Lance was busy with his own studies or his new friends that he spent plenty of time with, Keith would search the hallways, looking for Shiro while always pretending that he wasn't.

Once, he had stumbled upon Shiro standing close to another Garrison student instructor. It was an intimate moment that, clearly, was not meant to be seen by others. So, Keith fled quickly and quietly. Before that, though, he vaguely recognized the man with Shiro as Adam, someone Lance had mentioned a few times as one of the best pilots the Garrison had trained in the past several decades.

"I want to be like Adam or Shiro when I grow up," Lance had once sighed to Keith as they lay in bed together. "You know, a super amazing and famous fighter pilot. And, then, you and I can be partners in fighting against interplanetary crime."

"If that's what you want," Keith had chuckled, smoothing a hand through Lance's hair, "then that's what will happen."

If that's what Lance wanted, then Keith would be the Adam to Lance's Shiro, or the Shiro to Lance's Adam, or whatever else he wanted because Lance was Keith's soulmate, and that was that.

Except, as the months passed, and as Keith began to see less and less of Lance, it was becoming more obvious with each passing day that, perhaps, he couldn't give Lance what he wanted.

"They don't - " Lance stuttered around his heaving breath. His face was drawn tight, posture even tighter, and he flinched away from Keith's touch fast and hard. That hurt, but Keith pulled away because that's what Lance wanted. "They don't think I'm good enough to be a a part of the fighter pilot class. My entrance scores weren't good enough the first time around, and they're not that much better now. Not to mention, I haven't done all that well in the simulations, and..." Lance's voice trailed off as he swallowed. "They just don't think I can do it."

Keith reached his hand out again. This time, Lance allowed Keith to touch him. He didn't lean into it the way Keith wished he would, the way he had so many times before, but that was ok. For now, it was fine. "It'll be fine. Everything will be just fine. You can try again next year. We've only been here a few months. You'll probably be so much better by this time next year."

"Keith, you just don't get it," Lance whispered. He shifted and pulled himself out of Keith's grip. In his absence, Keith curled his empty hand and waited. "I'm not like you. I can't just waltz right into it like you did." Lance's voice dropped along with his eyes. "They say you're a prodigy, you know. That you feel like you could be the next Shiro."

Keith actually didn't know. He didn't pay much attention to what many of the instructors or other students said. "It doesn't matter. I think you'll be fine next year. Anyway, there's no rush. We still have a few more years as students here."

"But what if I'm never good enough?" Lance asked. "What if I'll always just be a cargo cadet?"

"Then I'll go and be a cargo cadet, too, if that's what you want."

Suddenly, Lance reeled back with a huff. He looked at Keith with exasperation, and Keith wasn't sure why. “Keith, I want you to do whatever it is _you_ want to do. Don’t you want to be a fighter pilot?”

“I just want to be with you and make you happy,” Keith whispered. He was terribly sincere, and it almost scared him. “Even if that means not being a fighter pilot.”

Eyes soft, Lance gave Keith a shaky smile. “Keith, I appreciate that, but all I really want is for you to be happy, too, doing whatever you want, even if I can’t be there to do it with you.”

"I wouldn't know what to do without you, though," Keith said.

Lance looked at him again, a bit sad with slightly narrowed eyes before he gave Keith a small, hesitant smile.

They spent the rest of that night in silence. It was warm, and Lance was wrapped up nice and soft in the crook of Keith's arm. It was almost perfect and their's.

Except some part of it felt a little off. Either way, Keith loved being with Lance the best.

Too bad Keith and Lance's meetings only grew less frequent as time went on. Even worse, most of Keith's free time was subsequently taken up by having to see Griffin's face.

At least Shiro was there, too.

"Come on, guys," Shiro sighed, pulling Keith and Griffin close together. Griffin grimaced at Keith, and Keith was more than happy to return the gesture. "You two are so good at working together with others. I don't know why you have such trouble with each other."

"Maybe that just means that we're not meant to work together," Keith snipped. "So maybe you should stop trying to force us to."

Shiro clicked his tongue impatiently. "Hey, like I said earlier this year, you never know who you're going to be with in the future. You're going to have to learn how to work with _everyone_."

From the corner of his eye, Keith saw Griffin scowl lightly at Shiro's words. At least they had one thing in common: their distaste for each other.

"You know what? Maybe I'm approaching this wrong." Shiro was muttering to himself. He glanced between Keith and Griffin questioningly before deciding on his own answer. "Why don't we have you two try to pilot a real ship together?"

"Are you sure?" Griffin asked. His voice was breathless with desire, though, and his eyes gleamed with an itch that Keith had never seen him express before. It made him look almost tolerable. "Are we allowed to?"

Shiro smiled. "I won't tell anyone if you guys don't."

"Won't they be able to figure it out, anyway?" Keith asked, crossing his arms. "They have cameras all around the hangars."

"If we're careful, I think we should be fine. I can pull a few strings."

So, the three of them went, sneaking through the halls. At least, they tried to sneak. Keith was pretty sure that they never actually were out of the cameras' field, but, nonetheless, they still reached the hangars unhindered. He supposed someone as famous and talented as Shiro was bound to have some nice connections.

Quickly, Shiro popped open the top of one of the slightly larger fighter jets before quickly ushering Keith and Griffin inside. It had to be, in order to fit all three of them inside.

"So, I'll be right here with you two to make sure that we all stay safe, in case something happens," Shiro announced, strapping himself down into his seat with such care that it almost offended Keith. "But, other than that, I leave the piloting up to the _both_ of you."

The whole thing went better than Keith had expected, but not nearly as well as he had hoped. He managed to work with Griffin better than he ever had during class and simulations, but it still wasn't perfect because Griffin refused to do things exactly as Keith wanted.

"It doesn't make any sense for you to increase thrusters right now," Griffin argued in that grating voice of his. "You're just wasting fuel and getting us nowhere by doing so."

"And I'm saying that it _does_ make sense!" Keith insisted. "It's not like we need to save fuel right now, and increasing thrusters allows us to cruise further above the ground, which will help us avoid detection from the Garrison."

In the end, Keith had to come to a compromise simply because they would've actually crashed otherwise. Shiro looked pleased with their progress when he wasn't hanging onto the arms of his seat with a white-knuckled grip. Keith supposed that was only fair, especially when they accidentally start nose-diving for a few seconds after another one of their arguments. Shiro had just about taken over control, but Griffin had managed to actually help Keith regain control, for once.

Once it was all over, as much as Keith didn't want to admit it, he had to concede that Shiro had a point with it all. He didn't necessarily like Griffin any more than he had before, but Keith did respect him as a pilot. Just a little bit more, of course.

The most important thing that Keith gained was the feeling that, perhaps, there was something to piloting. Something that made it worth it, all on its own. A sense of self-worth that Keith had never really had before that wasn't somehow attached to Lance.

It was strange. It was nice. Keith didn't know what to do with it.

At least Lance was distinctly happy about Keith's sudden revelation.

"That's great, Keith," Lance said from where he lay beside Keith, lazily drawing far-away pictures on Keith's shoulder. "I'm glad you've started to like piloting for your own sake."

"But I still wouldn't mind waiting," Keith murmured. "If I had to."

Lance shook his head. "Don't. Please, don't."

Rationally, Keith knew why Lance was being so adamant about Keith going out, living his own life for himself, the way Keith imagined a parent would push a nervous child into the world.

He knew it was because Lance was nice and because Lance loved him.

And Keith loved Lance back. So, he tried hard to hold back the faint thrum of disappointment that came upon him, strange and unbidden.

Things will be fine, Keith told himself. Just be patient and be good.

That was what Miss Elise had always told Keith to do, after all.

Sometimes, he really missed her. He reminded himself to call her again soon.

But, now he had Lance, and Shiro, too, in a way.

Keith held on to that thought as he fell asleep, left to his own mind as he dreamed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> please let me know what you think!
> 
> if you want to talk to me or if you want more information about my writing, you can find me on [tumblr](https://fever-d-dreams.tumblr.com)


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